text: Genetic disorders are often an issue within captive populations due to the fact that the populations are usually established from a small number of founders.  In large, outbreeding populations, the frequencies of most deleterious alleles are relatively low, but when a population undergoes a bottleneck during the founding of a captive population, previously rare alleles may survive and increase in number. Further inbreeding within the captive population may also increase the likelihood that deleterious alleles will be expressed due to increasing homozygosity within the population. The high occurrence of genetic disorders within a captive population can threaten both the survival of the captive population and its eventual reintroduction back into the wild.  If the genetic disorder is dominant, it may be possible to eliminate the disease completely in a single generation by avoiding breeding of the affected individuals.  However, if the genetic disorder is recessive, it may not be possible to completely eliminate the allele due to its presence in unaffected heterozygotes.  In this case, the best option is to attempt to minimize the frequency of the allele by selectively choosing mating pairs.  In the process of eliminating genetic disorders, it is important to consider that when certain individuals are prevented from breeding, alleles and therefore genetic diversity are removed from the population; if these alleles are not present in other individuals, they may be lost completely. Preventing certain individuals from the breeding also reduces the effective population size, which is associated with problems such as the loss of genetic diversity and increased inbreeding.